In 1975, the architectural firm of Oppenheimer, Brady & Vogelstein with Barry Goldsmith as project architect and John Pruyn as associated architects designed Independence Plaza North, one of the city's handsomest middle-income housing projects.

A megastructure with several cantilevered, 40-story towers of red brick and striated concrete block overlooking the Hudson River, it stretches north of Chambers Street to North Moore Streets in TriBeCa. It is just to the west of several low-rise Federal houses that were relocated at about the same time to the site and sold for as little as about $60,000 each.

Independence Plaza North contains about 1,340 apartments and it has long been a very important unofficial landmark of TriBeCa. In 2004, Laurence Gluck, an investor, removed the complex from the Mitchell-Lama affordability program and continued to received the project's J-51 tax incentives for two years from the city designed to keep apartments rent-stabilized.

According to an according by Julie Shapiro in this week's edition of the Downtown Express, Mr. Gluck maintained that he "only continued receiving the tax break by mistake, and since he discontinued the benefit and repaid his taxes, he does not owe the tenants anything."

Like Tishman Speyer Properties and Stuyvesant Town, Mr. Gluck wanted to raise as many rents to market-level as possible.

The tenants sued and in a March 5, 2010 decision the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal decided that the complex should not be rent-stabilized and so advised New York State Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman, who had asked the state agency for advice on the issue. According to Ms. Shapiro's article, "She can now either affirm or contradict the D. H. C. R.'s pro-landlord recommendation."

"In her March 5 decision," the article continued, "D.H.C.R. Deputy Commissioner Leslie Torres did not examine the question of whether the city Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development should have allowed Gluck to repay the tax benefit. 'It is not within the purview of D.H.C.R. to second guess or overrule that decision,' Torres wrote. Torres appeared particularly cautious about offering any interpretation of the laws, saying that was the purview of judges, not state agencies. Instead, Torres said that given H.P.D.'s decision to allow Gluck to repay the tax break, it was as though he had never received it. And that, in turn, means that I.P.N. is not subject to rent-stabilization, she said."

Stephen Meister, Mr. Gluck's lawyer, told Ms. Shapiro he was gratified by the decision, adding that "in the end, this is a win for the tenants as well" and stating that the tenants are already benefiting from the 2004 agreement they negotiated with Gluck before he removed the building from Mitchell-Lama, which offers them some rent protections.

In the article, Mr. Meister said that the tenants would lose those protections if they won their case. Diane Lapson, the tenant association president, the article continued, said the 2004 agreement provides fewer benefits than rent-stabilization would, and she knows of many people who have been forced to leave I.P.N. because their rent got too high.

"It is unclear how soon Justice Friedman could take up the I.P.N. case again and issue her decision," the article stated, adding that "Even after that decision, the losing side will likely appeal to the state's Appellate Division. After that, either side could petition the state's Court of Appeals to consider the case."

Last fall, the New York State Court of Appeals found that the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, huge housing complexes on the east side of First Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets, were wrong to deregulate apartments while receiving tax breaks similar to those at Independence Plaza.